


first blush

by doomcountry



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Complete Self-Indulgent Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22944634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcountry/pseuds/doomcountry
Summary: Peter sleeps like the dead.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 16
Kudos: 317
Collections: Soft Elias Fics





	first blush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [needsmoreyellow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/needsmoreyellow/gifts).



> lil sticky-sweet lonely eyes somethin' for bre on her birthday <3

Peter sleeps like the dead. Most Lukases do, in Elias’ experience. Once, ages ago, Peter told him about a great-uncle who, in an attempt to avoid a meeting with an acquaintance, slept for fifteen years. “It’s probably not true, in the end,” he had said, laughing. Elias, knowing the family, had not been so sure. But he had held his tongue, smiled, accepted another glass of Peter’s wine.

Elias is an early riser, though, and Peter is almost always still deep in his damp, empty dreams when he gets out of bed in the morning. That suits Elias just fine. Peter’s more irritating qualities are null when he’s asleep, and Elias’ favorite pastime—looking—is best done in quiet.

Next to him, Peter is flat on his back, one arm resting crooked above his head, the other resting on his belly. He’s a tangle of sheets and covers, as usual—always steals the bedding away in the middle of the night, no matter how hard Elias holds on to them. He’s naked, like Elias, and when Elias gets up to pull open the curtains the hazy pre-dawn light crawls over the curves and edges of Peter, disturbing his eyelashes, resting on the edge of his parted lips, enough of a change to make him shift a little, turn his head away, settle. Elias breathes, that vaguely humid smell that permeates the air whenever Peter is around for long periods of time, that settles on the sheets and on his skin like a heavy summer day.

The bathrobe he pulls from over the back of the armchair is deep burgundy, with gold patterning and his monogrammed initials. He doesn’t bother tying it too tightly closed. It was a gift from Peter, years ago. It’s too big for him, and he leans against the wall for a moment while he rolls up its sleeves, looking down at Peter. The steady rise and fall of his chest. When he sits up, Elias knows, he’ll have the most infuriatingly charming bedhead, his white hair all at angles. He’ll let Elias pick and fuss at it until it’s to his liking, grinning just to aggravate him. It’s how things go.

Most of the little things in his house are gifts from one Lukas or another. They’re a gift-giving family. It’s a very efficient way to buy privacy. _Take this, and don’t call for another year._ On the carefully curated side-tables and shelves that line his walls are a hundred expensive vases and curios and knick-knacks and bric-a-brac collected over two hundred years of grudging partnership. None of it personalized to Elias in the slightest, of course. Half of it he hates. But it would be rude to reject a gift. Mostly, he ignores it all—occasionally rearranges it or puts some of it in rooms less-visited.

Peter’s gifts are the ones that get used. No matter how hard he tries—and Elias knows he tries—he simply doesn’t have the same knack for the impersonal. At least not when it comes to Elias, for whatever reason. The bathrobe. Monogrammed, for God’s sake. The set of extremely expensive Japanese knives. A dozen sets of cufflinks all in colors and styles he knows Elias likes. Gold with black. Gold with green. He weathers it with his perpetual smile whenever Elias teases him about it. _What would your mother think?_ he says. _Be careful. I might begin to suspect you actually care about me._ And Peter doesn’t say anything about it. Usually drifts off in a veil of fog soon afterward, as if to do some personal penance. But the gifts keep coming all the time.

He’ll make a cup of tea, he thinks. With, of course, the automatic tea kettle Peter bought for him last year. It’s perfectly quiet in the kitchen—the sun, just beginning to color the sky, melting like butter down the windowsill, down the wall, toward Elias’ feet on the cold floor in a slow creep.

He rubs absently at the spot on his neck where no doubt a bruise will be flowering before too long. He hopes it’ll go away by Monday; otherwise he’ll have to find a high-collared shirt to wear to the Institute. Peter knows he hates it when marks are left—it’s why he leaves them. It’s a wonder, he thinks, that they haven’t killed each other yet, with how often and how persistently and how purposefully they annoy each other. It’s just the tension of them, he supposes. Just the way their little dance works out.

He doesn’t mind it so much. He doesn’t hate it nearly as much as he pretends to. Which is a problem in and of itself—but it’s seven in the morning, and he can care about it later.

He only makes one cup of tea. He himself isn’t much for tea in the morning, but Peter is.

Back up the stairs, no sound at all, not even traffic from the distant road. Just his feet on the carpeting and the sound of the robe against his skin. When he nudges open the bedroom door with his shoulder again, the sun has fully found its way in through the window, finding places to nestle in the tangle of sheets and the contours of Peter’s body.

He is lovely. Elias supposes he should consider himself luckier than he does.

Mug in hand at the side of the bed, he lifts one leg and plants his foot square on Peter’s chest and pushes, just a little, just enough to rock Peter’s bulk from side to side. When he gets no response, he does it again, and Peter’s face scrunches inward, his white eyelashes part, the lines of his face smoothe out and he looks up at Elias with clear blue morning eyes and smiles.

“Get up,” Elias says. He removes his foot and sits down on the edge of the mattress, elegantly crossing his legs. He hands Peter his mug and folds his hands expectantly in his lap. “It’s well past breakfast time.”

Peter doesn’t seem to have heard that last part. He sets the mug gently on the nightstand, his brows furrowed in mild confusion. “That’s nice of you,” he says, looking at it.

“I’m in a good mood.”

“What a terrifying thought,” Peter says, mildly.

His bare leg is laid carelessly out across the covers, and Elias tilts his head, reaches out and runs his hand down the solid bone and lean muscle. He wants to bend down and kiss his kneecap, of all things. Dimpled, soft, perfect little hill. His hand travels up, through the pale hair on his thighs, up toward the mound of his hip, back down again. His fingernails leave pale pink lines on his skin. Peter watches him with a quiet combination of curiosity and bewilderment.

“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, my dear,” he says.

Elias smiles, preoccupied still by the movement of his hand. “I’m feeling fond of you this morning.”

“Oh?” Peter nudges his hip with his foot.

“Keep that up and my fondness will quickly evaporate,” Elias says, but not with any conviction. He takes hold of Peter’s ankle and folds his leg back, firmly. _Don’t play with me,_ it means. Peter’s grin doesn’t waver.

“If you’ll let go of me, I’ll get up and make you breakfast,” he says. “Since you’ve been so nice to me already.”

“I _have_ been nice to you today.”

“ _Light_ of my life,” Peter says, thick with sarcasm. Elias is still smiling when he leans up to kiss him, dry but deep, the faint smell of his breath and his clean skin. Peter is always so meticulously clean. Elias wraps an arm around his neck, slides a hand into his hair, thinks about—pressing his chest to Peter’s chest, dipping his head to kiss his neck—all very uncharacteristic of him. But Peter in the morning is so warm, so loose, so good to touch, more open to the idea of touch than at any other time. Elias gets so tempted. Sometimes it takes all he has to restrain himself.

“Maybe,” Peter says, half into his mouth.

“Maybe what?”

Peter’s arms come around him, and he tugs him off the edge of the mattress until he is lying somewhat flat against his side, bathrobe rucked up, frowning. He lands somewhere between Peter’s arm and his chest and digs his fingers into the flesh of Peter’s side, a warning.

“Peter,” he says.

“It’s not very often I _want_ to just lie with you for a while,” Peter says, sounding a little hurt, though it’s probably for show. “Indulge me.”

“I have things to do.”

“Indulge me,” Peter says again, and Elias sighs.

From here he can see the window, and the light rising in it, painting the panes of glass. In the tree outside the suggestion of movement, of birds or wind. It’s a cloudless morning, the sun pale robin’s-egg blue, and delicate as an eggshell besides, the kind of sky Elias imagines one could poke right through with their finger, if they tried. He wonders, vaguely, face pressed against the side of Peter’s chest, where his skin is tacky warm, when Peter is going to float out of his life again, off on his ship into the place where that sky meets the ocean. He tells himself quite strictly, most of the time, that it doesn’t matter and that he does not care. But he’s still human enough to know when he’s lying to himself.

Peter is quiet. His fingers are making lazy circles on the bone of Elias’ elbow, through the fabric of the bathrobe. His eyes are closed, and for a moment Elias thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep again. He shifts, hoping to make a getaway, but he’s wrong, and Peter’s arm cinches him a little closer still.

“Peter,” Elias says, warning.

Peter exhales, dreamily. His eyes open and focus on the ceiling overhead, and without meaning to Elias follows his gaze. Nothing up there to look at, but maybe that’s the point.

“What would your mother think?” Elias says, his go-to retort, whenever Peter is a little too touchy, a little too affectionate. It’s mostly a joke at this point. Whatever the ramifications of whatever this is, it’s between Peter and his god. They both know it.

“Hopefully, she doesn’t think of me at all,” Peter says.

That’s that, then. Elias resigns himself to the curve of Peter’s body against his.

He can look for a while, since Peter seems to be fully occupied with the empty ceiling, and with holding him hostage in this bed. There’s peace in looking. Beholding would prefer it to be different, but there are certain privileges that come with serving fear. It calms the rate of his pulse and the race of his mind immediately. He nestles his head into the place where Peter’s arm meets his chest and looks, at the landscape of his body up close: collarbone, throat, the veins in the throat, the near-imperceptible traces of sun damage on his skin from years at sea; the wiry white hair that covers his chest and the coy pink nipple just above where his fingertips are resting, and the whole expanse of his stomach downward, the hair on it, too. He sighs again, slides his hand up and then down across it, feeling the tight muscle buried under the plush of his belly, and the warmth of Peter’s blood rising to meet his hand in the peculiar way that all touch sparks heat in a Lukas. At the divot where Elias’ ribs end Peter’s fingers press softly, as if in acknowledgment.

Never once have they told each other _I love you._ Not once in almost twenty years. It’s not in their natures. Elias is fairly certain he’s lost the emotion entirely; Peter would be too mortified to ever admit it, too afraid of cosmic consequences. Perhaps there’s a loophole, though. Maybe that’s what this is. Being quiet and looking. Love isn’t something the Eye or the Lonely care about. In the one case it’s a distraction; in the other it’s a crime. But he’s still human—a little. And Peter is still human—a little.

Elias closes his eyes. A few moments of being without seeing isn’t so much to ask, however wrong it feels. For right now, at least, Peter isn’t going anywhere.


End file.
